Missing Justice sk-2

by Alafair Burke

  "Johnson needs to talk to Townsend. Some evidence might come out at

  the prelim that could be disturbing." I told Roger about the

  nonoxynol-9, my conversation with Tara, and Clarissa's phone records.

  "That's a hell of a lot to dump on a guy, Samantha. Your cops didn't

  think to mention any of this to him earlier?"

  "Don't blow this out of proportion. This is the usual way it's done.

  We guard the information, but in the end the family hears it first from

  us. The only thing that's making this hard is having to go through you

  to get to our victim's husband."

  "When Johnson asked him the other night about barrier methods, Townsend

  assumed there must have been a sexual assault."

  "We still don't know," I said. "Maybe the nonoxynol's Jackson's.

  Either way, Tara seems to think Clarissa was seeing someone else. Think

  what you want about the phone calls."

  "I'll tell him myself," he said.

  "I want to send someone over, Roger. You can pick whomever you're most

  comfortable with, and you can be there. But I want a cop to tell him."

  It was the first step to bridging the gap between Townsend and PPB, an

  accomplishment that would help the rest of the case run smoothly.

  Roger wasn't having it. "I'm not trying to be an ass, Samantha, but

  don't tell yourself you're doing this for Townsend. There's not a man

  in the world who'd choose to hear something like that from a cop

  instead of someone he at least knows is on his side. You want the cop

  there to see his reaction, and it's totally unnecessary. Townsend's

  cleared. I'll tell him myself."

  I had to admit it with Townsend's alibi and poly, there was no

  compelling justification for having a detective present when he heard

  the news. "Fine," I said, "but some words of advice?" He was silent

  during the pause. "When you break the news to Townsend, try to be a

  little more subtle than you were with me."

  I hung up, angry at myself for losing my cool. I wrote a memo for the

  file about my conversation with Tara and sent a duplicate and the phone

  records to the discovery desk. Now that Townsend would be getting the

  news, I could make the disclosure to Slip.

  I needed a pick-me-up. Fortunately, I had saved the best call for

  last. Chuck answered at MCT.

  "I was wondering when I'd hear from you," he said. "You find my note

  last night?"

  "Pretty cute. I'm not sure Vinnie enjoyed being the messenger, though.

  Looked like he tried to chew it off of his collar."

  "He was probably trying to eat the damn thing. Greedy mutt snarfs down

  anything within a three-foot radius."

  "Takes after his mommy that way. Now, as much as I'm enjoying

  deconstructing my little man's eating habits, can you please share the

  good news? I didn't appreciate the cliff-hanger."

  "I am pleased to announce that Heidi Chung, famed PPB crime lab

  specialist, will testify that blood on the hammer Johnson took from

  Jackson's apartment belonged to Clarissa Easterbrook. The ME says it's

  consistent with her injuries."

  "Yes! I knew we'd get it." Even so, I felt relieved to have the news

  officially in. Establishing probable cause against Jackson would be a

  breeze.

  "Ah, but there's more," he said. "A little surprise to end your day

  with."

  I kicked my door shut with my foot and dropped my voice low. "It's not

  exactly a surprise if you tell me about it ahead of time."

  "Get your mind out of the gutter, Kincaid. This surprise is from

  Chung. She got Jackson's prints from his booking. Matched his right

  index and middle to two of the unidentified latents on the

  Easterbrooks' door knocker."

  I let out a small scream. It always felt good when a case came

  together, but it was particularly satisfying to have my first murder

  case wrapped up with a tidy little bow on top. I told him to ask the

  crime lab to get the reports to me ASAP so I could include them in

  Slip's discovery package.

  "Now," he said, "if you want to get back to that conversation you

  started a second ago, I'm up for it. But I charge two ninety-nine for

  the first minute and one ninety-nine thereafter."

  "As tempting as that sounds," I said, "I think I'm in the mood for

  something a little more personal."

  "I could probably handle that. Maybe come up with a surprise or two of

  my own."

  "You're on. Seven o'clock, my house. Bring your toothbrush. This one

  might be an overnight."

  Eight.

  With the evidence in against Jackson and the charges formally filed, I

  finally got a taste of a regular MCU morning on Thursday. It was just

  like a morning in DVD, but instead of grinding out morning drug

  custodies, I was churning through the night's assault arrests.

  As required, I finished the misdemeanor screening cases first. I held

  back only one to issue as a felony. Robert Jenkins, a

  thirty-seven-year-old man with a prior trespass conviction at an

  elementary school, was tackled by the father of a four-year-old girl

  after the father found Jenkins taking pictures of his daughter at the

  park. The girl remained clothed the entire time, but Jenkins had

  manipulated her into various poses that revealed his Chester the

  Molester ways. When the responding police officer perused the other

  shots in the guy's digital camera, he found forty photographs of eight

  different kids. Bent over, legs spread, fingers in their open mouths;

  the details varied, but the gist was always the same. Jenkins admitted

  to the officer that he used the pictures to pleasure himself sexually

  and did not consider them to be art.

  A single line at the end of the police report hinted at the problem

  with the case: "I decided to arrest the suspect for harassment, since

  he touched the vie to achieve the desired pose, and such touching was

  offensive under the circumstances." It wasn't obvious what to charge

  the defendant with, but I wasn't about to let a guy like Jenkins off

  the hook with the misdemeanor of harassment.

  I flipped through the penal code to confirm my recollection, but the

  child sex abuse laws all required physical contact or at least nudity.

  I reread the victim's statement. For the photograph of her straddling

  the slide, she said Jenkins told her to climb up the ladder, then

  pulled her feet on either side of the slide before she went down. She

  said the slide hurt her skin and she didn't know why she couldn't keep

  her dress beneath her legs. The officer noted some redness on the

  backs of her thighs. Good enough for me. An assault on a

  four-year-old is a felony, and I had an appellate case saying a red

  mark is enough to get an assault charge before a jury, which I'd pack

  full of parents. Jenkins could make all the arguments he wanted about

  strict statutory definitions, but the charge would stick.

  I sent a follow-up request to a detective I knew in the child sex abuse

  unit asking him to run Jenkins's other photographs by the DARE officers

  who worked the schools near the park. Even if finding the other kids

  didn't lead to more charges, telling the pa
rents seemed like the right

  thing to do. They were probably convinced that the "don't talk to

  strangers" talk had been enough to protect their kids. It never is.

  Thanks to a grand jury appearance and an overdue response to a motion

  to suppress, I didn't finish reviewing the rest of the custodies until

  nearly noon. I apologized to Alice as I put them on her desk. For her

  to finalize the paperwork in time for arraignments, she'd have to work

  through lunch.

  "The least I can do is bring you something," I offered. She told me it

  wasn't necessary. If the attorneys here paid for lunch every time they

  screwed over the staff, we'd all be broke, and they'd all be fat. But,

  after the polite amount of argument, she accepted.

  Alice estimated she had another hour of work, so I decided to take in a

  quick run. Jessica Walters was also in the locker room and asked if I

  wanted to join her for a loop around the waterfront.

  Whenever I run with someone new, I let them set the pace. We were

  clocking about an eight-minute mile, which was comfortable for me, but

  I couldn't tell if she was holding back.

  We crossed the Willamette over the Morrison Bridge, saving the

  prettiest, downtown side of the loop for last. Once the noise of the

  bridge was past us and we had dropped down to the river's edge, she

  asked me if I had ever tried to run with the office's Hood-to-Coast

  team.

  The Hood-to-Coast is Oregon's annual relay race from Mount Hood to the

  Pacific coast. At one time, there had been an official District

  Attorney team. When Duncan found out that the members wore T-shirts

  bearing electric chairs, one for each defendant the runner had placed

  on death row, he pulled the plug.

  I reminded Jessica that the group was no longer the official office

  team, making no effort to hide my sarcasm.

  "Whatever. Have you ever run with them?"

  "I didn't think I was eligible." My impression was that a team member

  needed to have a reliable eight-minute mile, the ability and

  willingness to drink mass quantities of alcohol, and a penis. Two out

  of three didn't cut it. "In any event, I figure you choose your

  battles." If I was going to become the office's rabble-rouser, it

  wasn't going to be for the privilege of running with a group that likes

  to polish off the day by watching each other light their gas.

  We had started a subtle incline but hadn't dropped the pace. Jessica

  didn't say anything until the path flattened out again.

  "How's the evidence against Jackson looking?" she asked. She was

  winded but could still get the words out.

  I gave her the abbreviated version. "I know the case is strong, but

  ever since I issued it, I've been finding myself getting worried. Frist

  thinks I might regret telling the defense about the affair."

  "It's your first murder case," she said, "so you're worrying more than

  you need to. It's normal. You'll feel great by the day of trial."

  She was right. A case is always strongest at the beginning, when all

  you've got is what the police have given you. As you move toward

  trial, your job and the defense's is to pick, poke, and prod at every

  last thread, any possible wrinkle that might turn out to be the glove

  that won't stretch over the defendant's hand. But by the first day of

  trial, you've tucked in the loose strings and ironed out the wrinkles,

  and the case is clearer than ever.

  "I also still wonder why she was calling you," I said, "and if it had

  anything to do with the murder. Maybe because of the gang unit? Do

  you work with public housing at all?" It wasn't unusual for us to work

  with other agencies on long-term crime reduction plans.

  She shook her head. "The community prosecution unit will call HAP

  sometimes if they know of a problem in the projects, but we stay out of

  that stuff in the trial unit. Hard enough to get cooperation on cases

  without getting people worried about losing their apartment."

  When I didn't respond, she looked over at me and laughed.

  "You need to chill out, Kincaid. It's just a phone call. I called

  twenty people this morning, and if someone chops me up in little pieces

  tonight, I guarantee you it won't have anything to do with any of

  them."

  "It just seems weird to call someone you don't know, leave a message,

  and not say what you're calling about," I said. "And that number she

  left you was her cell, by the way."

  "It was?" Jessicas tone told me she found that unusual too.

  They say murder cases are like any other criminal case, but with one

  important difference: Your most important witness, the victim, is gone

  forever. The reason for Clarissa's phone call was lost with her death,

  along with all the other information she took with her.

  We picked up the pace as we passed the courtyard at the north end of

  the waterfront, then began the slow jog through downtown back to the

  courthouse. She stopped at the Plaza Blocks to stretch, and I put in

  about thirty seconds with her before I grew impatient. My doctor says

  I've got the heart of a healthy horse but the bones of a

  ninety-year-old man. Regardless of his warnings, I still spend every

  exercise minute I can spare going after every calorie I can burn.

  "I stuck Alice Gerstein with some last-minute custodies and told her

  I'd bring her back some lunch, so I better get a move on," I said,

  explaining my abrupt departure.

  "Don't let Frist know you're being so considerate," she said. "Makes

  everyone else in the unit look even worse."

  I was happy to find the Mexican food cart parked outside the

  courthouse. I got fish tacos on corn tortillas for me and a chicken

  burrito for Alice, then climbed the stairs to the eighth floor to

  polish off my workout.

  Alice accepted the bag with the burrito in it and thanked me. "Sorry

  to break this to you, but you've got another visitor."

  Still out of breath and in my sticky running gear, I was in no

  condition to have a meeting. "Who is it?" I asked.

  "Melvin Jackson's mother. She's been here about twenty minutes."

  "Can you tell her to schedule an appointment? I'm a mess, and I have

  some work I need to do before the death penalty meeting on that

  case."

  "I'll do it if you want me to," Alice said, "but I can tell you right

  now it won't be pretty. She threw a fit when I told her no one was

  here to talk to her. We finally calmed her down by telling her you

  were on your way back."

  "We don't usually meet with a defendant's family members. Maybe she

  should call the defense attorney."

  Alice was patient, but the look on her face reminded me of that plumber

  I'd hired when I told him to try adjusting the flu shy chain doohickey.

  "I tried that," Alice said, "but I believe her response was, "I don't

  need to talk to some lazy-ass public defender. I need to talk to the

  lady who's buying all this bullshit about my son.""

  Given Walker's description from the night of Jackson's arrest, it

  sounded like the last two days had actually done wonders for Mrs.

  Jackson's forbearance.

  "F
ine. I'll be ready in a few minutes."

  When I'm not distracted by the television, the refrigerator, or singing

  in the shower, I can get ready in seven minutes flat. It's one of the

  advantages of never learning how to put on makeup or do my hair. A

  shower, a hair clip, and a change of clothes are all I need to

  transform back into my regular everyday self.

  Martha Jackson was in the reception area, shifting in her seat and

  tsk-ing every time someone walked by for a reason other than to see

  her. She was short for her weight, a trait that was only accentuated

  by the hot pink lilies on her dress that appeared to bloom from her

  generous bosom and broad hips.

  I managed to get my name out, but she was off and running before I had

  a chance to offer her some water and a seat in the conference room.

  "You got a hundred lawyers in this office. How come I got to wait half

  an hour to talk to someone about a case that's been on the news every

  day of the week?"

  I tried to explain that not all the lawyers work on each individual

  case, but she was looking for a fight.

  "You trying to tell me you'd leave someone waiting here if they ready

  to say they seen Melvin Jackson do it?"

  "Is that what you're here to say?" I asked.

  That did the trick. "Hell, no. No way Melvin could kill that woman."

  It was exactly what I expected to hear, and I herded her into a

  conference room while she repeated it every way she could think to say